VANCOUVER — Precisely fifty years after the last time they got a winner-take-all chance to reign supreme in Canadian men’s university basketball, the Calgary Dinos are back with a chance to dance for all the marbles.

The Canada West champions, led by the dynamic performance of conference player of the year Thomas Cooper, and sizzling sixth man Jas Gill, did what the rest of the nation has had trouble doing all season against the Ontario champion and No. 1-seeded Ryerson Rams: Build a lead and then hold it.

Cooper, nursing a sore right shin, scored 18 of his game-high 30 points in the first half, while Gill scored 17 of his 23 in the second half, as the Dinos built a quick 16-point lead and then weathered the storm to come away 98-87 winners, earning a date in today’s championship final against the five-time defending champs — Ottawa’s Carleton Ravens.

As steady as ever in the second half, the Ravens flicked the switch that has come to define their Final Four DNA and over the final six minutes of the third quarter, put up a brick-wall on defence which denied penetration, created turnovers and fuelled a fast-break offence that turned a one-possession game into a 10-point lead that would hold en route to a 76-66 victory over the Dalhousie Tigers.

While Carleton is back in its most familiar setting of all, Calgary last played in the present-day version of the CIS national championship final game in 1966, suffering a 95-83 loss to Windsor that season.

The 2016 model?

In head coach Dan Vanhooren’s 16th season, it has a chance to become the school’s new gold standard.

“We have to give it to Calgary,” said Ryerson coach Patrick Tatham. “They hit a ton of threes, 12 to our six and they won by 11.”

Cooper’s three-pointer with 2:13 left in the second quarter had the Dinos on top 44-28 and capped a 10-3 run which had given them, with halftime looming, all of the game’s momentum.

However the Rams put together their most productive spurt of the opening 20 minutes, peeling off a game-saving 10-0 run over a span of just 64 seconds, guard Ammanuel Diressa capping it with a trey 52 seconds from the break that made it 44-38 for Calgary.

The Dinos got a bit of a boost, however, when they fast-broke down the floor and set up guard Jhony Verrone for a three-pointer that dropped through with a second left and pushed the Calgary lead out to 47-38.

Late in the third quarter, Calgary’s Gill knocked down back-to-back three-pointers to open a 13-5 stretch, one which re-established the Dinos’ cushion at 14 points (71-57).

That run was capped by a third triple from Gill, and when he sunk it, with 1:15 left in the frame, he turned to the crowd at the Doug Mitchell Arena and flexed his muscles.

“My teammates trust me to go out and get those shots, so I was happy to get amped up and rolling,” said Gill, whose teammate David Kapinga was a match-up nightmare for the Rams en route to 26 points.

It was fitting for both Gill, who finished with all of his points off the bench, and the Dinos, who finally showed the rest of the country that there was a team capable of holding off the Rams.

“Windsor, Carleton and UBC,” lamented Tatham of the foes his team has rallied to beat in recent weeks. “There’s only so much you can do before the magic runs out.”

Now the Dinos turn their attention to the Ravens. Needless to say, the entire country will be looking at Calgary as underdogs.

“Carleton? That’s the first team I heard about when I came up here,” said Cooper, a Chattanooga, Tenn., native in his first year with the Dinos. “We don’t have a lot of time here We’ve got to get ready real quick.”

Sponsored Links

Rams ousted in national semifinal

VANCOUVER — Precisely fifty years after the last time they got a winner-take-all chance to reign supreme in Canadian men’s university basketball, the Calgary Dinos are back with a chance to dance for all the marbles.

The Canada West champions, led by the dynamic performance of conference player of the year Thomas Cooper, and sizzling sixth man Jas Gill, did what the rest of the nation has had trouble doing all season against the Ontario champion and No. 1-seeded Ryerson Rams: Build a lead and then hold it.

Cooper, nursing a sore right shin, scored 18 of his game-high 30 points in the first half, while Gill scored 17 of his 23 in the second half, as the Dinos built a quick 16-point lead and then weathered the storm to come away 98-87 winners, earning a date in today’s championship final against the five-time defending champs — Ottawa’s Carleton Ravens.